What is your soil cation exchange

capacity?
Ron Goldy, Michigan State University Extension - November 7, 2011

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Soil cation exchange capacity (CEC) is a significant number for an important soil
characteristic. It comes into play when applying water, nutrients and herbicides, but do
you really know why?

What is your CEC? Don’t take this as a personal question, but it is an important soil
characteristic growers need to know and understand. CEC is short for cation exchange
capacity, but what is that? What does CEC mean for you as a grower and how does soil
with a low number differ from soil with a high number?

Soil particles are negatively charged and attract positively charged molecules. These
molecules can be nutrients, water, herbicides and other soil amendments. A soil
particle’s ability to react with these molecules is called the cation exchange capacity. If
the CEC number is low, not many molecules are able to bind (react) to the particle
surface. If the number is high, a larger number of molecules can bind to the particle’s
surface. Michigan soils have a wide range of CEC values with sand-based soils having
numbers below 10, clay and silt soils having values of 15 to 25 and organic soils
approaching 100. To further confuse the picture, since Michigan is a glaciated state,
values can change significantly within many fields.

CEC is directly related to soil composition. High sand soils have low CEC values with
the number increasing as the soil contains more clay, silt and organic matter. A good
visual analogy is to think of a sand grain as a book. A book has definite width, height
and depth that can be measured, but has a low surface area compared to volume – just
like a sand grain. The relatively small surface area provides a limited number of sites
where molecules can bind. The pages of the book are like clay molecules. If the pages
were removed, they would have the same volume as the book itself, but a greatly
expanded surface area providing more molecular binding sites, thus increasing soil
reactivity (higher CEC). The next step in increasing surface area would be to shred the
book. Shredding again keeps volume the same, but greatly increases total surface area,
providing more binding sites, leading to increased CEC. Shredding the book would be
analogous to an organic soil.

Now that you understand (I hope) CEC, how does knowing the number and
understanding the concept relate to your farming practices? The basic aspect to
remember is CEC indicates how well soil holds on to anything applied to it (emphasis
on anything) and how difficult it is for plants to take it away. Soils with low CEC grab
hold of very little. Water passes through beach sand at 20 inches an hour, but in clay or
organic soil, it could be less than an inch an hour. This indicates how to irrigate different
soils. Low CEC soils need quick but often irrigation, while high CEC soils need slow
irrigation less often. If growers have drip irrigation on a sandy site, it is best to irrigate
twice a day using high flow emitters, but only for an hour or less each time. If soil has
greater clay content, it may be best to irrigate with low flow emitters for a longer time
(six or more hours) every three of four days.

One foot of a sand-based soil at field capacity may have less than an inch of water
available to plants while a loam or a silt-clay loam may have close to 2 inches available
water. With evapotranspiration rates of 0.3 inches per day (a good hot, sunny day in late
July), plants exhaust available water in three days in sand but seven days in loam. Clay
soils contain more unavailable water than what sand can have at field capacity (Figure
1). This is due to the high reactivity of clay particles hanging onto water molecules and
plant roots being unable to take it away.

Figure 1. Available water capacity for 10 soil textures in

inches of water/foot of soil.

Dr. Jim Beuerlein, Ohio Agronomy Guide, 14th Edition, Ohio State University Extension Bulletin 472-05.

When applying nutrients to low CEC soil, it is best to apply a little at a time otherwise
you run the risk of leaching them through the soil and into ground water, especially on
seasonally high water table sites. When applying nutrients to clay soils, due to their
naturally slow infiltration rate, it is best to incorporate them. If they are placed on the
surface they are prone to run-off during periods of heavy rain (or overhead irrigation)
and contaminating surface water.

Many herbicide application rates are also CEC dependent. That is why they will indicate
on the label that you need to use lower rates on coarse-textured soils (sand) and higher
rates on fine soils (clay and silt). Some herbicides are simply not used on organic soils.
This is because the high CEC of organic soils binds the product so tightly that it is not
effective and will not give the desired weed control.
CEC is a soil characteristic you need to pay attention to since it helps with getting
maximum efficiency (and economics) out of your irrigation, nutrient and herbicide
applications. The only way CEC can be determined is by conducting a soil test.
Additional soil information for your sites can be found at the NRCS Michigan Online Soil
Survey Manuscripts website.

For more information on commercial vegetable production, contact Ron Goldy

at 269-944-1477 ext. 207 or goldy@anr.msu.edu.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more
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